Great review. My addition is that these should have been offered in a zip file. They were individual downloads and took an age to download. I'm guessing it was due to these files the CJ's site was frequently unavailable due to going over the bandwidth.  In between the bandwidth problems I donwloaded 2 of these, when I went back for the third the site was down for going over bandwidth again so I gave up. I might have a go at downloading the remaining 2 at some later time, and at a time when I have a lot of my download allowance left.

Hi Graham, no I'm in Australia.  One of the agencies said they have a 30 day from date of invoice policy, but that date passed over two months ago.  I have done work for agents that have long-ish time frames but they generally have let me know up front and they continue the communication. I have a feeling that at least on of the two agencies in question has no intention of paying at all. It's very frustrating.

That is very cool. I love the bee body idea!

I made a couple of little minions like one of those roly-poly balloon toys so that they could race  Here's a video of them on their 350Q track...

http://tinyurl.com/kzjpc33

Gotta love minions!  

Hi folks,  sorry to bring up a bit of a negative topic but have any of you ever had trouble getting agencies to pay?  

I've done work for one agency and my wife did a job for that same agency and also another one and after many messages and invoices and emails and calls etc. they just don't pay....they don't even respond.

I don't really know what the next step is to trying to get payment. Have any of you had to resort to using debt collections agencies or anything like that?  If anyone has any experience with bad payers or advice on getting these people to pay I'd really appreciate hearing your story.

Santa! Thanks David Brenion!

Arrrgh, I popped all my original attempts Graham, all the various pinch twist/bubble combos.

I have got a few of my final tries though.  

Edit: I posted this and then noticed the pics come up in reverse order, but you get the idea.

Wow, thanks Graham! It hadn't occurred to me to make them separately and then smoosh them together, that makes it much easier to handle. I was making it all in the one big cluster which was really cumbersome and didn't help when trying to get everything even and level and I was using 6 of each but I think the 5 make it a lot cleaner.  I'm not using 646's either, I just wanted to make it out of 350's and 360's like you did. In the end I brought the 350 body of the princess, locked it into the top of the dress and then I still had enough of that 350 to reach down and lock into the base which also helped pull the base up and level it a bit more. Then I added the string of pearls and I found that helped to stabilise it a bit more too.

My lounge room is currently full of various attempts at this thing  I'm going to pop them all tonight and then do up the final version tomorrow and then I'll post the pic.

Thanks Lisa, I am a member of balloonclick and I love that site. At one point I was thinking about scaling up Ken's smaller princess dress from that site. I really love the bigger ones with the link-a-loon pearls at the bottom too, so in the end hopefully I'll get something that's a mixture of them all.

Thanks again.

Hey Graham. Actually I'm not interested in the sculpture from the waist up, only the dress alone.  I have already been having quite a few goes at it, even though the design itself is quite simple it's the bottom that's giving me problems and I'd really like to know what's going on under there.

The bottom (well the bit that touches the floor) is a bit like two basket or hat weaves sitting on top of each other, or a star of balloons on top of another star. I originally tried it like a top hat with two pinch twists in the middle of the star then at the end moving both pinch twists to the same side...then I tried it with a 350 spacer bubble between the two stars, then a 260 bubble...then I tried it with no bubble or pinch twists and just tying the stars together. The problem with all of these methods is the base ends up either concave or convex, or sometimes just a bit askew so unlike the sculpture in the pic it is very difficult to get it to stand up.

Having said all of that, I think I might have hit a solution at about 1.30 in the morning last night. It's 6.30am as I write this and as I look across at last night's effort it still seems to be standing up and looking vaguely princess-ie...but I could just be delirious from the lack of sleep

I'll do some more experimenting today and I'll post a pic of what I finally come up with. If this dress is on a DVD or in a book that anyone knows of I'd still really appreciate it if you could let me know.

Muchas Gracias

Billy

PS. Graham, thanks for the heads up about Shirley Ray I'll go and check out her stuff now.

Hi folks,

Does anyone know if this dress design is taught on any instructional DVD's or books etc.?  I found it when doing a Google search for princesses, it was on Balloongenuity.com website. I emailed them and asked about it but never got a reply so I'm guessing my email may have gone into a junk folder or something, therefore I'm hoping someone here might be able to shed some light.

It looks Ken Stillman-ish with the double layer look, but I think I prefer this design with the balloons folding back in underneath.

Anyway, if someone could point me towards a resource I would be so grateful.

Many thanks

Billy

B is for Bert...

Yes that's right Graham it is Tony Twist.  Here's the flyer from the Ozjam Facebook page - http://tinyurl.com/lw8jyqd

Hi Lisa, no I didn't get there, next time for sure though. I notice they have a UK twister giving some classes in early 2014 so I'm planning to get along there, as much to meet some other twisters as anything else.

Thanks guys. I'd love to get to twist n shout, I definitely want to grab the missus and head to one of the big conventions. I saw some great convention pics on T. Myers facebook page, looked like a lot of fun.  

Hi folks,

I'm a twister from Australia. I'm about an hour's drive north of Sydney on the central coast of NSW. I'm actually in the mid point between Sydney and Newcastle so although most of my work is in Sydney I do also travel up to Newcastle a bit too and do work around Newcastle and the Hunter Valley wineries etc.

Great to be here, I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone and to contributing where I can.

Cheers

Billy